Niederhäuser Hermannshöhle, Riesling, Spätlese, 2014
Such a special vineyard. This is complete, salty, composed, with fabulously pure mouth-watering fruit, brimming with energy as the racy cool but utterly charming flavours coat your mouth. There is typical Hermannshohle power here, but the cloak of 2016 makes it very lovable immediately. There's a touch more stone fruit than in the Brucke, and a finish that is definitely more to the salty saline end of the spectrum.
critic reviews
From an old parcel in the Hermannshöhle whose vines are still single post-trained, this auctioned bottling (representing the contents of a 600-liter Halbstück) delivers a highly aromatic and luscious amalgam of white peach, pink grapefruit and Persian melon not unlike that familiar from its A.P. #12 counterpart. Suggestions of nut pastes complemented by candied citrus rind are also present. But this boasts a yet creamier texture, greater delicacy, and a more complex and mouthwatering mineral savor, allied to raw scallop-like sweetness and salinity.
In 2014 the Donnhoffs bottled two different Spatlese Rieslings from their family cru Hermannshohle. The regular 2014 Riesling Spatlese Niederhauser Hermannshohle shows a clear and aristocratic bouquet of great finesse. On the palate, this wine is so deliciously ripe, piquant, fine and elegant that it is almost mind-blowing. This is great and extremely cool, precise, finesse-full, frisky, filigreed and light-hearted, though still a serious Spatlese with a stimulatingly piquant finish. A great Spatlese -- one of the finest I had in 2015.